RoQyPiece Theatre – Ninja Turtles (1990)

For this first edition of RoQy’piece Theatre, let’s step back to a time before my stint in the indie underground hiphop field…

In light of the recently released reboot and cinematic desecration of my childhood … otherwise known as “Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (since you missed that, that was sarcasm), I decided to look back in retrospect to a flick which pretty much defined my early childhood. No, not Batman. We’ll geek out on that, on another time, b.

Do you know how much I wigged out when I first saw this? I had to have been, what, five? Six?? Seeing a live adaptation of a cartoon I obsessed over, completely blew my damn mind. Can’t even lie to you, I probably thought they were real. Like every red blooded American child, I was corporately-pimped into loving pizza and having an unhealthy obsession with the San Diego Sewer System. Speaking of which, when I walked by sewers I’d even try to peer through the gutter slots in hopes of seeing one of the grotesquely mutated, anthropomorphic turtle vigilantes. If real, their irradiated and most likely feral asses would have mauled me like one of those emaciated pigs in the movie Snatch.. I didn’t care , though, I was introduced to the larger-than-life world of my dreams:

But uhhh… looking back and all.. there were a lot of themes in this movie that weren’t necessarily fit for children.. and I don’t mean in that perverted Disney sexual innuendo way either.

Let’s just go in order lol… the movie pretty much leads off with April O’Neil getting slapped, told to shut up, then literally punched out.. narrowly avoiding God knows what, had Raphael not shown up.. you know what I’m referring to.. O_o …hey..! this was late 80’s New York and they were dressed up as Ninjas waiting for the damn J Train to Brooklyn, don’t give me that look… case in point:

Then you have this.. my gateway into developing my insatiable desire to use profanity and shit..

This was after two punkers from the movie Summer of Sam jacked someone’s grandmother in central park sometime after 10:30 at night.

Am I just over exaggerating ? No. No I am not.. down below, at 3:37 a childhood icon gets beaten to the point of torture then THROWN THROUGH A GLASS CEILING, spending a good 30+ of the film in a coma!!!!

Seriously.. LMAO.

I can’t find the youtube clips because that’s just how things work.. but yeah.. Ralph crashes throw the ceiling, the Foot shows up, hilarious stand off moment turns to the Foot Clan grabbing axes and trying to cleave the heroes in their child-friendly faces. They end up literally chopping the apartment floor into shotty plywood, causing the floor to collapse. One unfortunate bastard tries to Random Axe one of the turtles in the face.. he misses and hits a power cord. As you guess, he violently dies from electrocution as the electrical fire spreads through the condemned antique shop / apartment project, to a gripping dramatic movie score.

Depression and an underlying sense of hopelessness.. because children’s movies are prep guides for your inevitable student loan debt-filled adulthood. That building is a metaphor for our dreams. Deep.

After this we’re subjected to a good 10 minutes of Casey and April’s back and forth flirting and sexually repressed angst, which includes a highly suggestive bra-less shoulder massage in the kitchen. I clearly didn’t know how to use my paintbrush* yet [ * (c) – Leeroy Green ] , but I definitely knew that Casey wanted to uhh…. put his sword in April’s sheathe.. yeah.. see how awkward you felt reading that? That’s how children felt watching that unnecessarily long “bonding moment”. It’s all good though.. because that wasn’t targeted towards the children anyways.. that was for the parents forced to sit through what they initially thought would be a pretty harmlessly stale kids flick… THIS, though?? lolol

Peddling cigarettes to minors in the film. “That’s no big deal”, you say? I’m looking too much into it?

Alright, I’ll see you on that… and raise you with THIS: Lol, after Shredder tries to impale Splinter by charging at him; he misses, falls over the ledge, and is caught by Splinter. Shredder then tries to throw a 4 inch spike through Splinter’s face at pointe blank range, which causes him to fall.. not in that “nooooo” green screen, Die Hard type of fall either..

Yes.. after falling 5 damn stories into the back of a conveniently placed garbage truck, Casey, instead of leaving Shredder contained for the NYPD to arrive (and surprisingly NOT Stop-and-Frisking or choking innocent people), he pulls the leaver on the trash compacting mechanism while sarcastically yelling “OOPS”.. crushing a human being to death. Close up shots of the greasy gears crushing Shredder’s novelty samurai helmet confirm that Casey is now a cold blooded murderer of the 1st degree.

I see it.. I see it!!!!

While I’m clearly making light of the movie.. squeamish, overprotective soccer moms found this flick horrifying. So much so, the immediate sequel’s script was immediately declawed and turned into the real shit of nightmares..

Then there was this…

which I forgive because nothing is as bad as Vanilla Ice, even he will admit that. He was the true villian. Shredder even drowned himself in the finale of TMNT 2, for reasons I think are solely based on that horrific song.

In all seriousness, looking back, the original TMNT was a straight classic and a cinematic cornerstone for any pre-adolescent 80’s baby. It married elements of the (literally) graphic novel with the soccer mom friendly , Americanized version. From the corny jokes, to the intense action scenes, to the solid story, to the visual representation, I feel it did justice. Michael Bay is known for butchering movies into a 120 minute explosionorgy of nonsense and bad acting. Hopefully, this latest reboot can break that tradition.

I’m about to go find out.. crossing my fingers!

Until next TyRaiD…. peeeeeeeeace!!

-RoQy

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE ORIGINAL MOVIE IN COMPARISON TO THE LATEST REBOOT? HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT REBOOTS , IN GENERAL?? LET US ALL KNOW, RoQ Riffs!!!! THE CULTURE IS BACK!!